From 1993 and his Kamakiriad solo album comes this Donald Fagen tune, which puts New Frontier-era sci-fi into a blender with gender roles, suburbia, cheesy monster thrillers and other things the Steely Dan mainstay grew up with. It's one of my favourite songs he's ever written; how can you not love lines like, "They're mixing with the population/ A virus wearing pumps and pearls" or

A few months ago, we got to see one of my favourite performers, David Byrne, live in concert, in Toronto. Just before he took the stage with his band (and co-headliner Annie Clark, a.k.a. St. Vincent), he spoke over the P.A. with some witty advice. Fans were welcome to take pictures and all that, he said, although he kindly reminded people to be civil and not keep a screen in someone else's face.

He got a good laugh, and for good reason: there's been an annoying tendency of some fans to not just snap a pic, but to in effect make a movie, regardless of a) the quality of the product and b) what the production means to the folks in the surrounding seats.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Ever had one of those days when you feel like you have your own personal raincloud? This short video, featuring some clever animation grafted to real life, ought to resonate. I spotted it on Vimeo's staff picks list. What makes it particularly impressive is that James Lancett and Sean Weston made it as a student requirement while enrolled at Kingston University in the U.K.

“In Seoul, when you move into an apartment, you have a choice of three or four providers selling you symmetric fiber access for $30 per month, and installation happens in one day,” Crawford told TIME in an interview Tuesday. “That’s unthinkable in the United States. And the idea that the country that invented the Internet can’t get online is beyond my imagination.”

Monday, February 25, 2013

I was making some new playlists for puttering around the house, walking, and that kind of thing, and came across this chestnut from a few years back by Jill Barber, late of Halifax, now (I believe) out in B.C.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

"If you write a story about a soldier going AWOL and kidnapping a pregnant woman and finally shooting her in the head, it’s called searingly realistic, even though it’s never happened in the history of mankind. Whereas if you write about two people falling in love, which happens about a million times a day all over the world, for some reason or another, you’re accused of writing something unrealistic and sentimental." — Richard Curtis

[Richard Curtis has written and/or directed many things, from Blackadder and Mr. Bean through to romantic comedies like Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually. Hence the words above, given during a 2007 interview.]

Friday, February 22, 2013

Ian Dury and the Blockheads' song is a perennial pick-me-up, with its list of things Dury liked, from the naughty to the mundane (looking at you, porridge oats). It's today's song of the day. For past picks, click on the tag below.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

My teenage son and I watched Pulp Fiction last weekend (Martha, who is not that much of a fan, was at a social gathering). I hadn't seen the movie in years, and Nick had been wanting to see it, if only to place various parodies, including those on the Simpsons and Community, into context. There were definitely as many swear words as I remembered, but oddly not as much violence. The movie, I guess, had become more brutal in filtered recollection as the years went by. Still just as funny, though.

Here's a chart from Laughing Squid, showing the evidently very careful research that someone did on the body count of one of the most violence-approving directors of them all.

Some nice news for Hey Rosetta! earlier this month: Mumford & Sons has picked the St. John's band to help open for them at a festival in Ontario's Norfolk County in August. Should be quite the show. The song of the day is Red Heart, from a few years back.

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Why Dot Dot Dot?

That is, where did this blog get its name?

Dot Dot Dot is Morse code for the letter 'S,' the full message Guglielmo Marconi claimed to have received atop Signal Hill in St. John's in 1901. It ushered in the age of telecommunications. My maternal grandfather worked as a telegraph operator for Canadian Marconi on Signal Hill for many years.
As well, I have a habit of overusing the ellipsis when I write ... as frequent readers might notice.